'Super Thursday' for the book market
Updated on 01 October 2009
Publishers today launch a barrage of new books for the Christmas market. But will lesser-known authors get buried under the tide of television tie-ins? Ben King reports.
If you go down to a bookshop today, you will find the shelves groaning with new books.
Andrew Flintoff, Peter Kay, Ozzy Osbourne, Jo Brand, and Frankie Boyle lead the list of celebrities making their bid for the Christmas book bonanza.
The latest book from Swedish crime novelist Steig Larsson will appear, posthumously, and is expected to be a bestseller.
Audrey Niffenegger, who's book the Time Traveller's Wife was recently a Hollywood film, publishes her latest oeuvre.
There is a book of Tommy Cooper jokes, an expose of the oil industry, and a guide to men from the call girl blogger Belle de Jour.
And if none of that appeals, there are nearly 800 others for you to choose from.
It is called "super Thursday", the biggest day of the year for new book launches.
It is all arranged to give books the best run up to the Christmas market.
According to the Bookseller trade journal, 20 per cent of books (by value) sell in the six weeks before Christmas.
But books need to be on the shelves for a few weeks before that, to give them time to make their way into the minds of the book-buying public.
So early October tends to be seen as the ideal time and most publishers launch their books on a Thursday, hence the rush of business.
But selling large numbers of books requires publicity, and exposure in shop windows or discount tables in bookstores and all that will be hard to come by at the busiest time of the year.
But for authors and publishers, the riches of Christmas market are worth the risk.
